Ten Years Ago, 50 Million People Lost Power

Ten years later people are remembering, energy companies are trying to get better, but the grid is the same

Ten years ago today, 50 million people in the United States lost power. The great New York City blackout started at a power plant in Ohio, where a failed power line started a chain of failures that took out the power grids of the Northeastern United States and Canada for days and cost the economy something like $10 billion.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided some grant money for smart-grid technologies. But in terms of the grid itself, not so much. There were no fundamental changes in the way the grid is operated. You still have power lines and transformers and, mostly, central generation . At the transmission level, it’s pretty similar technology to what we had 10 years ago.

The greatest innovation in the management of the power grid in the past 10-15 years is the regional Independent System Operator, or ISO. The ISO is coordinator of grid planning and operations for the area served by its member companies. Generators and utilities interact through the ISO to coordinate and transact their business. When mature, an ISO also consolidates the otherwise fragmented practices over a wider area, creating immediate savings in shared reserves, and aggregate and smooth variability of wind energy.

When it comes to performance, the grid’s actually doing quite well. PA Consulting Group notes that U.S. customers only lose power 1.2 times per year, for a total of 112 minutes, not counting disruptions from weather (more on that later). FERC notes that high-voltage transmission lines have been available for normal use 99.6% of the time over the past three years, not including planned outages. Major transmission lines caused power losses only twice in 2012, after averaging nine times a year from 2008 to 2011.

So, we might not have to deal with the inconvenience and economic cost of blackouts. But neither we will have the experience of cities like New York just dealing, as Gothamist remembered the crisis, “with people helping direct traffic, throwing impromptu parties (thanks to restaurants who gave out food since it’d have to be thrown away anyway), being buddies during walks home and offering to let friends and co-workers crash at their place.”

About Rose Eveleth

Rose Eveleth is a writer for Smart News and a producer/designer/ science writer/ animator based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, Story Collider, TED-Ed and OnEarth.